


4. Adam's Song

by Whreflections



Series: Shuffle fics [4]
Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Kid Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-28
Updated: 2012-11-28
Packaged: 2017-11-19 19:12:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/576682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whreflections/pseuds/Whreflections
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part of my shuffle meme fics series.  These were supposed to be drabbles, but I don't really do drabbles typically so...some of them are, some of them not so much.  </p><p>Rick and Daryl go out on a scouting run, and Daryl has to make a choice he never wanted to face.  In the aftermath, he doesn't know about anything anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	4. Adam's Song

**Author's Note:**

> 4\. Adam's Song- Rodney Crowell
> 
> (the songs in these first ten I'll post all came from my current playlist on grooveshark, cause I was too eager to do this to wait for my Zune to charge and give me many, many more song options, haha)

_We don’t wanna say goodbye_

_We don’t wanna feel that empty_

_But it’s time to face the dawn_

_Head on_

_Then there’s something in the wind_

_When the days go getting shorter_

_And the nights run cold and clear_

_Down here_

_Taking each new day to give_

_What we need to do our part_

_We’ll keep learning how to live_

_With a lifelong broken heart_

_And we never will forget_

_It’s a privilege to remember_

_The sound of days gone past_

_Will last_

_You will never be alone,_

_Go on_

_When we cannot understand_

_When we cannot find new meaning_

_We’ll seek out the ones you loved_

_And love_

He could feel Carol hovering outside the door, almost like he could hear the breath she was holding, feel the tension bleeding through the steel door even though he hadn’t looked back.  The grave was finished that morning, done before he’d even been able to haul his ass up off the ground courtesy of Glenn and Maggie.  It was finished, and Carl had come and gone, and he was here, the last one, holding everyone up with a dry mouth he wasn’t sure could say a word. 

Most of the ones he’d had had come out in a rush the night before, some only half formed as he knelt over a rusty pool of water, scrubbing at the blood on his hands.  How many times had he preached it had to be the head, _had_ to be the brain and yet he’d hesitated at first, reluctant to put an arrow in a face he’d come to love so much.  When he did the arrow went right through, sickeningly easy, a bright flash of red where there had been only the mesmerizing blue of his left eye, and the minute his body stopped walking, Daryl was right there to rip that arrow out, whipping off his shirt to cover his face.  He’d seen his handiwork once; he didn’t have to see it ever again. 

That shirt covered his face still, bloodstained and wrapped tight, and though he’d spent the last half hour with his eyes roving over every detail of the hand he held between his own, he’d managed to keep his eyes averted from _that_.  Picking him up it’d be hard to avoid but he had to do it, would never have left it to anyone else.  He’d understood when Andrea insisted on burying Amy and he understood all the more now, something fierce and angry in his chest ready to boil at the thought of his body in anyone else’s arms.  No matter that they all had a claim on him, Daryl’s was different, made different by the last four years in this prison that had somehow become the best of his life.  It was funny, really, because the group, most of them still looked back at Before like it was something in the stars, something they longed for and couldn’t reach. 

Daryl, he looked back on his daddy’s belt and broken glass and Merle’s fists and his momma burned alive when he might could’ve saved her, and he woke to Rick’s hands on his shoulders, to the only soul who’d ever seen his nightmares, the only one who’d ever shared his bed.  He’d never have dreamed of it, before, had long given up on finding a woman and never even considered finding a man but there in the prison things had changed; everything had changed.  All of them, he didn’t doubt they’d go back if they could but for him, the only good life he’d ever had had come within these walls. 

He wanted so bad to be angry, to let rage in all its familiarity burn him up until he felt just a little more like himself, but he’d cleared the rest of those walkers out and all he’d felt was exhaustion, a bone deep weariness and a tight line that kept him pulled to Rick’s side, tending his dead.  On a hunt when he was ten Merle had shot a possum, sent it spiraling down from a tree to smack sickeningly into a twisted root and by the time they got there it wasn’t alone, a young kit already plenty old enough to climb having made his way down to the foot of the tree in pursuit of his mom.  He clung to her, white face bloodied and buried in her shoulder even in the flashlight beam, and Merle had laughed, shot him and called it a service, said with survival skills like that, he’d never have made it anyway. 

He’d been a survivor since before the world went to hell, been keeping himself alive in a world that had never been welcoming but now, he thought maybe he was starting to understand.  Rick’s skin was cold and still he held on, thumb tracing the lines of veins in his wrist.  It was all familiar, all memorized and now all wrong.  He’d carried Merle’s hand for a while, pulled it out and turned it over and remembered it all in a jumble, love and hate and fear.  His loss was complicated; this, it was painfully simple. 

The door creaked on its hinges, not pushed all the way open but cracked just a little, just enough to prepare him for Carol’s voice before it came.  “Daryl?  She’s wantin’ to come to you.  Do you think-“

“Let her come.”  He hadn’t made up his mind at first, had thought maybe she was too young, maybe just tellin’ her he went down out in the woods would be best but with the decision right before him, the answer was easy.  She didn’t have to understand, but he wouldn’t rob her of the chance to try. 

He heard her coming easily, that soft clomp that Maggie teased was like a kitten in combat boots.  She was still such a butterfly, young enough to be all over the place in her eager movements and he loved that, loved that behind grey walls and barbed wire she’d still been having the childhood he never had. 

“Daryl?”  God, she sounded like an angel, bright and clear and soft and just like the first time she’d said his name, it made him blink away the burn in his eyes. 

“C’mere, sweetheart.  I’m right here.”  He let go only to lift her, a little surprised at how easy it was.  He’d held on until his fingers were stiff, till they were almost as cold as the hand he held but reaching out to pick her up was so ingrained, so deep.  He’d learned to grab onto her without ever looking down, haul her up to his hip and switch hands to still fire the crossbow with a toddler gripping at his shirt and pullin’ on his neck.  Taking her, it’d always been easy, right from the first time he held her to give her that bottle.  At four she was getting big to hold, all squirming arms and legs but she folded up well when she was tired, like the nights she climbed into Rick’s lap at the fireside, sleepy and ready to nestle in close. 

She folded up like that then but in a way that he hated.  He could feel the fear in her, in the way she gripped his collar and hid her face against his neck. 

“Hershel told me to wait for you, but-“

“You’re fine, darlin’.  I was comin’, I just…”  What, what could he tell her?  That he didn’t have it in him all of sudden?  Putting Rick in the ground wouldn’t make it real; it was real the moment he’d stepped into that clearing to see Rick lurching toward him, back crooked from the fall he’d taken that had ended his life.  He didn’t lack belief, just forward motion.  He held her tight, hand cupped against the back of her head in case she tried to look back when he spoke.  “We gotta say goodbye to your daddy.”  Even around the lump in his throat, somehow it came out well enough, strong enough, though he closed his eyes when her fingers tightened on his shirt. 

“Fifteen minutes; he promised, he said-“

“You can’t blame him for that, sweetheart; you know your daddy.  If he said he was comin’ back, he meant it.  Anything that happened after, that ain’t his fault.”  Not strictly, not really, not even if he was still wishing he could even be mad about _that_ at least.  It would’ve been at least half logical, would’ve given him something to do while he sat here at Rick’s side, something to say, rambling on about how he shouldn’t have gone on ahead, how they should’ve stayed together, but he’d stayed stubbornly quiet.  The anger, it was held down by too much truth, by the heavy weight of knowing on a dozen other days, they’d have done exactly the same thing and nothing bad would’ve happened, nothing bad at all.  Rick was capable, more than capable, brave and strong and safe as anyone could be in a world where no one was safe. 

Her tears fell against his neck, shockingly cold, and he squeezed her gently, rocked her just a little in his arms. 

“I know it, baby, I know.  We’re gonna be alright.”  He’d been tellin’ her that since she grew old enough to know things weren’t quite right, old enough to know about walkers and see the struggle.  For the first time, he was no longer sure he believed it. 


End file.
